System setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | Gigabyte GeForce 8400 GS 256MiB | ATI Radeon HD 2400XT 256MiB | HIS Radeon HD 3450 Silence 256MiB | Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 512MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £25.84 | £33.26 | £31.02 | £29.95 |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 4.1 | ||
| Stream processors | 16 | 40 | 40 | 40 |
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 459 | 695 | 594 | 594 |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 918 | 695 | 594 | 594 |
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 800 | 1,584 | 792 | 990 |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 64 | |||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 LGA775 (2.66GHz, 6MiB L2 cache, dual-core) | |||
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H (nForce 7100+630i) | |||
| Motherboard BIOS | F5 | |||
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA device driver 16.08 | |||
| Memory | 2GiB (2x 1GiB) Corsair DOMINATOR PC10000 DDR2 | |||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz | |||
| PSU | Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W | |||
| Monitor | Dell 24in 2405FPW - 1,920x1,200 | |||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 169.25 | CATALYST 8.3 | ||
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit | |||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9 and DX10 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley) Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX9 |
|---|
Notes
We've thrown in a Radeon HD 2400 XT GDDR3 card for good measure. More akin to a Radeon HD 3470, the XT uses faster GDDR3 memory and a higher core clock than either of the two HD 3450s from HIS and Sapphire.Trouble is, the older Radeon part can be purchased for around the same money as the two 3400-series cards.
Testing was carried out on one platform, equipped with an NVIDIA nForce 7100 chipset.
We've tried to keep the supporting platform relatively low-end, too, with only 2GiB of RAM and the cheapest 45nm Intel Core 2 Duo CPU in the socket.
Gaming tests were carried out at 1,024x768 and 1,280x1,024, with no AA or AF, and with low-detail image-quality settings.
Comparison numbers against a 780G chipset's IGP can be found here, although the underlying platform isn't identical.
